This is one interview not to be missed for everyone with even a passing interest in this year’s Download festival.
Download organizer Andy Copping has had a full and frank interview posted on the official Download website. Discussions in the interview reveal acts that may play in 2010, why Faith No More will be making their comeback at Brixton and not Download and much, much more.
Highlights from the interview include:
Who will play next year’s festival:
“Already I’ve got one act who will get confirmed fairly quickly, and there’s another headline act for 2010 that I’ll have confirmed by November.”
On Download’s success with pulling in big names:
“The fact that the festival is fairly well established now, and that more bands of a higher calibre want to play the festival, it does make the job slightly easier, because I’ve got more to have a go at – so I’m lucky in that respect. And I think that once the festival has a better reputation than it has now – you know, a little bit of heritage, it’ll make the job slightly easier than if I was going out cold with a new festival.”
On Faith No More’s Reunion:
“Faith No More’s an interesting one, because we were actually talking to them last year for 2008, but it became pretty apparent that we weren’t going to get them in time. I’d started the whole ball rolling, getting the band talking again – they weren’t even talking as a band 18 months ago! We’ve got some contacts with Mike Patton, who’s really the anchor of the whole thing in getting them all back together, so we made contact with him, and he was making the right noises.”
“So I guess that I was kind of a catalyst in getting them all back together, and was hoping that it would go quicker than it actually did.I got a call towards the end of 2008: would we be interested in Faith No More for 2009? And of course I was overjoyed and said “absolutely 100%”, so it was a good thing that we started the process so early, and at least managed to secure them for this year.”
On FNM playing Brixton prior to Download:
“The main reason for this gig was that the band wanted to play a rehearsal. What am I gonna do, say “sorry guys, you’re not going to do a rehearsal, it’s just going to be Download” - and lets just say I did put my heels in and say “you can only play Download this year”, and they weren’t quite ready because they hadn’t done a proper dress rehearsal?”
“I think it’s a shame if people are disappointed. The reality is we gave people who had a ticket for Download the opportunity to buy a ticket for the Brixton show before anyone else, which we thought was the only fair way of doing it.I think that people who are upset about it should look at it sensibly, and think about the reasons why it’s happening, which is so they can put on an even better performance at Download.”
On the future of Download:
“We seem to be growing year on year, and I think that as long as there’s good rock bands coming through we’ll carry on strong. Look, I booked the Prodigy in 2006 and people wanted to hang me out to dry – they wanted to shoot me, kill me. “Why you booking a band like Prodigy?” Let me tell you, in 2006 Prodigy were one of, if not THE band of the weekend – amazing. I book them this year, not one complaint about it, other than from people saying “please don’t let them clash with anyone, because we all want to go and see them”.”
“It just shows you that in the space of 3 years people have gone from “why are you booking this kind of act” to “this is the band we want to go see”. Same with Pendulum, I booked them last year and I was getting all kinds of abuse. Once again, probably one of the bands of the festival last year.”
For the full and frank interview, click here!
Download will take place on June 12th - 14th at Donington and will feature sets from Faith No More, Slipknot, Def Leppard, Whitesnake, The Prodigy, Limp Bizkit, Motley Crue, Marilyn Manson, Korn, ZZ Top, Down, Killswitch Engage, Journey, Clutch and many, many more.
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